Using the console to skip memory puzzles

[Squirrels]

If you're not in the mood to go through the puzzles, here's an easy way to skip them:

1. Use the console command "tgm" (without quotes) to activate god mode, which allows you to build as many blocks, relays and turrets as you want.

2. Build a bunch of turrets around the path to protect your indexers and fill in any gaps in the path with solid blocks.

3. To get past firewalls, simply pull up the console and click on the individual red blocks. An ID should be displayed, something like "(03047ac8) [EP]". Type "disable" (without quotes) to remove that block from the game. Do this for each block that gets in the way of your indexers.

And that's it. Bypasses the entire 5-puzzle ordeal in around 10 minutes.

[Nite69]

You only need 3 puzzles to advance the quest and they are easy, the last 2 are optional

[Squirrels]

So then this let's you skip all of them and 100% the quest. Even if you liked the puzzles, it's still useful in subsequent playthroughs.

Plus, the rewards for the optional stuff is still pretty important.

[MCHarris]

This is the problem with gaming

[taeles]

Originally posted by MCHarris:

This is the problem with gaming

Actually this is whats right about gaming. Instead of stomping around pissy about something they don't want to do, folks who simply arent interested in the puzzle (or who have done it before) can skip it. Cudos Bethesda.

I just finished the final one, but can definitely see myself skipping it in the future should i make another character.

[Viper]

Originally posted by MCHarris:

This is the problem with gaming

I agree...

[chris.boney]

Originally posted by MCHarris:

This is the problem with gaming

Originally posted by Viper:

Originally posted by MCHarris:

This is the problem with gaming

I agree...

and the problem is what exactly?

[Squirrels]

Originally posted by MCHarris:

This is the problem with gaming

Fallout 4 is not a puzzle game, and the puzzles aren't interesting challenges (I finished them the legitimate way yesterday, and discovered this after reloading an earlier save today).

Nobody would defend a Megaman-style platforming section in a Dark Souls game, why should something so woefully out-of-genre be defended here?

[Haldurson]

There are actually a few problems with it, but it's not horrible:
1. People who play Fallout 4 and peopel who enjoy Puzzle Games -- while those two groups may overlap somewhat, there are certainly people who only fall into the first group and not the second.
2. While you may be able to bypass the last two puzzles, the game does not tell you that. Technically, in an open-world RPG, ALL quests are optional, and Far Harbor itself is compeltely optional, which makes that puzzle no different from any quest in the DLC. I guarantee that if a quest is in someone's log, and they haven't ever done it before, it can be utterly frustrating when it turns out that the entire process to doing it is repetitive and not at all what they expected or wanted from the game.
3. You CANNOT save the game in the middle of the puzzles. Now that is fine for the short ones, but that last one can take a bit if you aren't a puzzle person, or if you don't expect it to require any more building than the previous puzzles.
4. A lot of people I've talked to who play FO4 don't actually like the settlement-building process, and these puzzles require knowledge of that same interface.

Now, I finished all of the puzzles, but I admit that I got stumped after doing a whole lot on that last one, and was utterly frustrated because I could not save the game in the middle of solving it, and was afraid I'd lose all of that (utterly tedious) work if I quit. That's simply bad design.

[Serrel]

Originally posted by Haldurson:

Now, I finished all of the puzzles, but I admit that I got stumped after doing a whole lot on that last one, and was utterly frustrated because I could not save the game in the middle of solving it, and was afraid I'd lose all of that (utterly tedious) work if I quit. That's simply bad design.

You obviously didnt listen to the convo while in the puzzle. You can leave at anytime and all progress is saves and when you resume you can take up from the exact same point. Just die, exit, save, return.

[Squirrels]

Originally posted by Serrel:

Originally posted by Haldurson:

Now, I finished all of the puzzles, but I admit that I got stumped after doing a whole lot on that last one, and was utterly frustrated because I could not save the game in the middle of solving it, and was afraid I'd lose all of that (utterly tedious) work if I quit. That's simply bad design.

You obviously didnt listen to the convo while in the puzzle. You can leave at anytime and all progress is saves and when you resume you can take up from the exact same point. Just die, exit, save, return.

But it's a Bethesda game. The fear that something might break when you can't save is absolutely warranted.

My first time attempting the first puzzle got bugged when the indexers simply wouldn't return after collecting the data. If that had happened on the final puzzle instead, I'd have quit or cheated immediately.

[clueless]

Originally posted by Squirrels:

So then this let's you skip all of them and 100% the quest. Even if you liked the puzzles, it's still useful in subsequent playthroughs.

Plus, the rewards for the optional stuff is still pretty important.

struggled through the first 3 memory tests and completed them
no interest in completing the last two if i dont have to
i know i can complete the quest but will i also be able to complete (start) the quests "Cleansing The Land" and "Close To Home" without doing them?

[☘♥♥♥♥♥♥Ireland]

Originally posted by Squirrels:

Originally posted by Serrel:

You obviously didnt listen to the convo while in the puzzle. You can leave at anytime and all progress is saves and when you resume you can take up from the exact same point. Just die, exit, save, return.

But it's a Bethesda game. The fear that something might break when you can't save is absolutely warranted.

My first time attempting the first puzzle got bugged when the indexers simply wouldn't return after collecting the data. If that had happened on the final puzzle instead, I'd have quit or cheated immediately.

Yeah. Live in fear dude and ignore game mechanics that work because you are scared they might not. It sounds like a very personal problem.

[Haldurson]

Originally posted by Esoteric Order of Dagon:

Yeah. Live in fear dude and ignore game mechanics that work because you are scared they might not. It sounds like a very personal problem.

You know he wasn't being literal. And that's not even the point. The point is that it's not a very interesting kind of puzzle.

Puzzles should be interesting, and not overly repetitive and tedious. That's basically it. Whoever designed the puzzles went out of their way to hide things, forcing you to build bricks all over the place to get more bricks. In fact, the way you solve it is not thorugh the use of logic, but through the use of knowing there's nothing else to do. That's not an interesting puzzle -- "just do the ontly thing that is possible". That's a chore, not a puzzle. Someone may as well have tasked you with digging up your lawn until there's no grass showing.

At least most of them, you would look at it and figure out how to solve it. In that last one, it's simply "build paths to everywhere, gather everything, until the solution is inevitable". That's not solving a puzzle, that's doing work. I think they were afraid of maybe straining people's brains so instead they decided to numb them.

[AriDeer]

Originally posted by Haldurson:

Originally posted by Esoteric Order of Dagon:

Yeah. Live in fear dude and ignore game mechanics that work because you are scared they might not. It sounds like a very personal problem.

You know he wasn't being literal. And that's not even the point. The point is that it's not a very interesting kind of puzzle.

Puzzles should be interesting, and not overly repetitive and tedious. That's basically it. Whoever designed the puzzles went out of their way to hide things, forcing you to build bricks all over the place to get more bricks. In fact, the way you solve it is not thorugh the use of logic, but through the use of knowing there's nothing else to do. That's not an interesting puzzle -- "just do the ontly thing that is possible". That's a chore, not a puzzle. Someone may as well have tasked you with digging up your lawn until there's no grass showing.

Puzzles should be intresting you say, there hasnt been a single damn good puzzle in years and people are acting like this is the one that should have any special negative attention.

[Haldurson]

It's fine that you don't like puzzles. I like SOME kinds of puzzles. At its core, a puzzle should engage your brain, regardless of what kind of puzzle -- that engagement can involve mathematics, logic, word play, spelling, even spatial relations. Those are all puzzles. This was mostly not even a puzzle -- it was not in any way intellectually engaging. Even a jigsaw puzzle would have been a better puzzle. Puzzles don't have to be original in nature (this one isn't, it's just minecraft). But they should be more than endless repetition.

Now, if you don't like puzzles, then no puzzle will be good, and that also was a part of my original point in this thread -- why add puzzles to a game that has a huge following of people, many of whom probably never play puzzle games? At least if you do so, pick something better that doesn't use a mechanism that, maybe close to half your players don't like and never use (crafting).

I've heard speculation that the only reason why the puzzles are the way they are is that they were trying to bring Minecraft into FO4. Great for the Minecraft people, but not so great for people like me.